For Better For Worse (16 page)

‘Why did the man do that to the window, Mummy?’ Jenny was puzzled that they could no longer see out into the street.

‘We have to be as quiet as pixies,’ said Sarah, putting her finger on her lips. ‘We don’t want him to hear us, do we?’

‘But why?’

‘It’s a game,’ Sarah told her.

When she put the children in bed, she’d kissed them fiercely. Downstairs in the kitchen she allowed herself the luxury of a cry and she prayed to God for help as she sat at the table to consider her options. If she couldn’t find somewhere to live, they’d take her kids away. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing them. She should have told Kaye what was happening that day she’d stopped her and taken her for lunch, but Kaye was so full of what had happened to her aunt in the mental institution that they hadn’t got round to talking about Sarah’s problems.

‘Lottie’s a sweetie,’ Kaye had told her. They were sitting in Hubbard’s restaurant eating omelettes. ‘But I’m going to have to take it one step at a time.’

‘I can’t imagine how awful it would be being stuck in one of those places,’ Sarah had sympathised. ‘Especially when there’s nothing wrong with you.’

‘I know,’ Kaye had cried. ‘And I can’t let them chuck her out on the streets, can I?’

Sarah sighed. If only Kaye knew within a few days she would be in the same sort of predicament. She should have said something. Kaye might know of a decent landlord. She moved in those kinds of circles. As she went up to bed, she wondered again if she should marry Peter. It would certainly solve all her problems and yet she respected him too much to take advantage of him like that. If he ever found out that she’d only married him because she was homeless, it would hurt him deeply and she owed him more than that. And yet, as she toyed with the idea, she thought perhaps she could carry it off and he would never know. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine him in bed with her. Immediately his protruding nasal hairs took on enormous proportions. The thought made her shiver. No, she really couldn’t marry Peter.

Over the next couple of days, she spent every spare minute looking for digs, moving out of town and towards the less desirable areas on the outskirts of Worthing, but to no avail. Every Nissen hut left over from the war and all the prefabs were already occupied. At the town hall, the woman in the housing department put her particulars onto a list and promised her that she would be considered for council housing when the time came.

‘What does that mean? When the time comes?’

‘We are going to build a whole new estate in the Durrington area,’ she told her. ‘The work should start soon.’

‘But I need help now,’ Sarah protested.

‘And I’m not a magician,’ the woman snapped. ‘I can’t conjure up a house out of a hat.’

Frustrated and upset, Sarah had left.

She had asked around her various jobs to see if anyone knew of lodgings.

‘Fancy a bit of a change, do you?’ Peter Millward asked when she’d quizzed him. They were sitting in his office at the coal yard. She was so desperate, even that was beginning to look attractive.

‘Something like that,’ Sarah smiled. Her heart was thumping in case he asked her more detailed questions, but thankfully he took her request at face value.

‘I’ll let you know if I hear of anything,’ he promised.

The landlord in the pub shook his head when she’d asked him, and Mrs Angel had promised to put a card in the window for her. Sarah was coming to the end of her options. At the end of the week, she counted the money in her purse and in the sewing machine fund, and discovered it still wasn’t quite enough for the two weeks’ rent she would have to give as a deposit on a new home. She’d have to settle for something far smaller, but that was fine so long as she and the children could be together. But the next week she came back to the cottage to find a stout padlock on both the front and back doors. Oh God, now she was truly homeless.

The weather in November was mild and still sunny. On November 15th, 1948, Malcolm Mitchell switched on his radio at ten o’clock in the morning and heard the BBC’s John Snagge announce that at 9.14 p.m. the previous day, Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, had been safely delivered of a prince. ‘Her Royal Highness and her son,’ he told the nation in dulcet tones, ‘are both doing well.’ Having acted upon Malcolm’s suggestion, among the first to send congratulatory telegrams to Buckingham Palace was Leonard Bentall, the mayor of Worthing, something which was worthy of a mention on the news on the Home Service. At roughly the same time, in Zachary Merton, a small maternity hospital in the village of Rustington about five miles from Worthing, Malcolm’s daughter was safely delivered of her son. For the royal prince, there would be the traditional forty-one gun salute in Hyde Park and the bells of Westminster Abbey would ring out. For Malcolm’s daughter, there would be no such celebration and from that moment on, at her father’s insistence, no mention of her baby. The father of the prince had played squash during the birth of his son. Henry Royale had languished, quite rightly so Malcolm thought, in his prison cell.

For the past month, Annie had kept herself to herself. To begin with, she’d spent a good deal of her time in her room, only coming downstairs for meals or when the doctor or the midwife called. She had perked up when she had received Henry’s letters, and although she had to remain hidden from view, she spent time playing the piano. Since her marriage, her playing had become a little rusty, but she was a talented pianist and soon regained her abilities. The music had soothed and calmed her jangled nerves. The letters from Henry had kept her going during her isolation, but since her father found out about them, she hadn’t received any more. However that didn’t stop her writing to Henry every day and she bribed the maid with a couple of her old dresses to make sure she posted them on her way home. To make absolutely sure Henry got them, Annie would watch her cross the road and put them in the postbox on the corner from her bedroom window.

‘My father is preventing me from getting your letters,’ she told Henry, ‘but I know you still write, my darling.’

She’d thought long and hard about Henry and relived their courting days and the memory of his passionate lovemaking. She understood that he was not perfect but she couldn’t – nay, wouldn’t – believe all the terrible things they said about him in that courtroom. The others might be quick to condemn him, but they obviously didn’t love Henry the way she did. She still clung to the idea that this was all a terrible mistake. Perhaps he had a twin brother he didn’t know about. But even if what they said was right, as far as she was concerned, she would forgive him. Henry was coming to get her and they would make a home together for the sake of their son.

All the decisions about her life were being made by others. The doctor, her father and her mother, had made all the arrangements for her confinement. She feigned obedience, but everything they’d said had floated over the top of her head, her only contribution being the occasional nod of assent. According to the doctor, she would have to spend the usual ten days after the birth in Zachary Merton and then she and the baby would go to a Mother and Baby Home until he was adopted. No one except the doctor knew of her situation and even her father’s insistence that she revert back to her maiden name was designed to keep her away from the public gaze. She’d fought him over changing her name. In her eyes, she was Henry’s wife and she still regarded herself as Mrs Royal, but in the end it was easier to give in. She had a private room in the maternity home and although her father was willing to engage a nurse to take care of the baby for her, the doctor persuaded him to follow the usual procedure.

‘Let her nurse the child for six weeks,’ he told Malcolm. ‘It will make her face up to her responsibility. I realise that this situation is not her fault, but you don’t want her making any more rash decisions.’

Malcolm could see the sense of that and when her father was around, Annie was compliant and cooperative to the point of slavishness. But when she was alone, Annie was busy making plans. Would she give up Henry’s son? Never!

The day after the baby was born, the local press came to the hospital to photograph any babies born at the same time as the new prince. Annie’s child had been born at almost exactly the same time as little Prince Charles, but nobody dared to divulge that bit of information. They had to make do with baby Ian Sheppard who had been born a few hours before the prince.

Annie stayed quietly in her room, and for an hour in the afternoon, her mother would visit. After lunch, the nurses would close the curtains and make sure each mother was resting on her bed. The first day she came, Judith hadn’t realised that this was part of the hospital routine and when the nurse said she would wake Annie, Judith wouldn’t let her. Instead, she popped in to see the baby. He was awake but not crying. As she stood over his cot, he watched her with dark, intense eyes and her heart melted. She reached out and touched his hand and he automatically opened his fist and then closed it around her finger. From that moment Judith fell in love with her first grandchild, and all her visits were planned around the time when Annie was required to take her afternoon nap.

On day five, Annie, quiet and subdued, said to her mother, ‘Take me home.’

‘You have to stay for ten days,’ said Judith.

‘But why?’ Annie protested. ‘It’s not as if there’s anything wrong with me. I miss you and Father. I want to come home.’

Her mother was sympathetic, because once Annie went to the Mother and Baby Home, she would be forbidden to visit. Going to the Home meant she would be saying goodbye to her only grandchild forever. Up until that moment, Judith hadn’t realised how hard that would be. ‘I’ll talk to your father,’ she said.

‘Can you give me some money and a few coupons?’ Annie asked.

‘Why do you need money?’ her mother said, mildly curious.

‘The trolley comes round in the morning and I’d like to buy a paper and some sweets,’ said Annie.

Her daughter watched her mother dig into her purse and pull out ten bob. Annie smiled. She already had almost four pounds in her own purse, but that was for something else entirely. She leaned forward and rewarded her mother with a kiss.

*

The East Worthing Utopia Hotel was very run-down and Mrs Mumford the manager left a lot to be desired. A middle-aged woman with untidy grey hair, she wore a food-stained cardigan under her floral wrap-over apron. Her fingers were yellowed with nicotine stains and she smelled almost as bad as the hotel she ran. Sarah felt ill at the thought of staying here, but what else could she do? It was all she could afford. She had worked out that if she eked out her money they could stay here for a couple of weeks.

The lino in the corridors was so dirty that her feet stuck to the floor when she stopped walking. They had to share the toilet with three other families. It was little better than a sewer and Sarah made it her job to clean it up. At first, she felt annoyed with the other tenants because they felt it beneath themselves to use a cleaning cloth. But on reflection, she understood that when you are at the bottom of the pecking order already, you’ll take any chance you can get to be one notch above the rest. The toilet cleaner was truly at the bottom of the heap, but for now, Sarah didn’t care. She did her best to keep her room clean and tidy, and having so little luggage was a distinct advantage. Sarah caught sight of one of the other tenant’s room as she left the door open. She had four children and possibly the contents of a whole house in that one room. Bags and suitcases lined the walls in untidy heaps.

They all had to leave their rooms by ten in the morning and weren’t allowed back until four in the afternoon. When Sarah complained, Mrs Mumford said, ‘Them’s the rules, like it or lump it.’ The weather wasn’t too cold as yet and she was grateful that it was dry. Each day after doing her cleaning jobs, Sarah looked for more permanent digs but there was nothing. She scoured the shop windows for vacancies and knocked on doors, but she was only met with disappointment.

Keeping the children clean wasn’t too much of a major issue. Every couple of days, she booked into the Heene corporation baths. The children loved splashing in the water and when the attendant moved on, Sarah climbed in with them. They could have a clean towel and a little soap as part of the price and together they had a very happy time.

Her biggest worry was their clothes. Where could she wash them? To pay for them to be sent to a laundry was difficult. For a start, she was trying to keep what little money she had left for food, and besides, people who used the laundry usually had a laundry box which was collected from their address. The only sink in the Utopia was used by all the other tenants as well and it was difficult to find a time when somebody else wasn’t washing, having a wash or washing up.

The few pounds she had saved for the sewing machine was fast being used up. She had just enough money for a couple more nights with Mrs Mumford when she decided she would have to swallow her pride and ask someone for help.

The next day Sarah realised that she had already left it too late. According to the note on the door, Mrs Angel had shut the shop and gone to stay with her sick sister, whilst Peter Millward was apparently in Wales. Sarah’s heart sank. Because of her own stupidity, she was finally homeless. Before she’d left for her sister’s, Mrs Angel had been pressing her for her new address in case Mr Lovett brought in another order, but her silly pride had made her fob her off. ‘Isn’t it silly?’ she would laugh. ‘I could take you there right now but I can’t remember the name of the road. I’ll tell you tomorrow. Can’t stop. Must dash.’ If only she had come clean, Mrs Angel might have even let her and the girls use her flat above the shop while she was at her sister’s.

Finding that Peter wasn’t at the yard was another blow. Before she’d been locked out of the cottage, by working late into the night, she’d finished the two lots of books he’d given her from his friends and was hoping to be paid. The money would have kept her and the girls at the hotel for a few more nights. The men at the yard told her that Peter was thinking of branching out again, this time with coaches. Day trips and holidays by the sea were becoming big business now and he wanted to be in on it from the start, so he’d gone to Wales to see some chap who had a coach for sale. She couldn’t stop thinking about him and his offer of marriage. She felt terrible about the mess she’d got herself and the children into – at this rate they’d be sleeping rough on the street before the week was out. Marrying Peter was the most sensible option because it would give them a roof over their heads, but she still couldn’t bear the thought of what she would have to do with him. She dreaded the welfare people finding out about her predicament, but every morning she woke with renewed hope that today would be the day she would find some rooms.